Does google take into account where in the page title the searched term is? For example, on my page titles, my site is first, followed by a short blurb with keywords. Would my ranking increase if I placed the keywords before my site name?
they may. it depends on the length of the title quite a bit- if it's really long, and getting cut off, or close to cut off, it very well could be affecting it. it's possible that this effect doesn't so much have to do with "where" it is, but the overall density of that specific phrase in the title. tweaking page titles may help a bit, but I wouldn't think switching them around would give you any super-drastic changes.
I'll have to say that when I made a similar change it helped a lot. This is for competitive and non-competitive search terms. I, in fact, changed many pages this way to increase ranking. I removed the company name from most of them and stuck with the KWP in the title in some cases.
Yes, it does matter..... however you are not guaranteed that you ratings will increase just because you do this..... Hope it helps Wayne
I have heard also that the earlier the key words comes up on the page title, the better for the ranking.
The keyword density in the Title is important. So "keyword" title twice better then "keyword wordkey". But when we are talking about "keyword wordkey" and "wordkey keyword" it's not a fact that one is better then another
All of the above, PLUS it can make a difference if some of the stuff in your title is not on your page. So if you are saying 'keyword phrase' : 'bluewidgets.com' you should have it in in your copy on page. If all the content of the title is not seen on the page then you might well lose out. The title is the most important of the on page factors, and is meant to give a clear view of what the page is about.
As an experiment, I dropped the company name from titles and put the keyphrase first in the title and as close to first in the page content on several pages. It dramatically changed SERP placement to the positive. I am now in the process of doing the same for the balance of all KW's and pages. This, while still focusing on getting one-way KW text-anchored relevant BL's. End goal is to have totally themed pages with IBL's to match.
I too experienced better results from dropping the site name from the title and going with only the keyword-rich page name.
Wow.. I did a little tweaking - still keeping my site name first, but moving certain keywords closer to the beginning of the string, and sure enough, PR6. Not bad... I'll have to play some more with this. Not sure i want to drop my sites name from the title just yet.
same here, added more keywords to the title and droped the company name in most of the site. Hope to see some results soon.
Changing your title may very well have improved your position in the search engine results. HOWEVER, the title of your page is totally unrelated to your PR6. (PageRank is determined by your backlinks.)
As cricket said, the PR increase is not related to the title change. Generally, the earlier in the title a word is, the more weight it seems to be given, so I would certainly consider putting the main keywords from your title in front of your site name, and possibly removing the site name from the title althogether. Congratulations on the increase in PR! Geir
Yes the position of the keywords in the title do matter. I also dropped the site name from the homepage and my ranking improved for my best keywords.
I definitely think title is the biggest on-page factor (and still a big determining factor) for ranking. A perfect example of this... I have a site (www.ccapplication.com) which ranks #2 for credit card application (also the plural form). I decided to see what happens when I add a mildly competitive phrase to the title (Apply For Credit Card). Next day I rank #4 for it, without any links with that as anchor text. So I do think it matters still.
First, unless you are IBM, Dell or Intel, your name in the <title> is dumb. Second, left justify the primary keyword phrase to be competitive. Anything else is a losing concept. The only exception to this is in local search and that is where to place the city's name at the front or end of the keyword. Example Dallas Internet Marketing Or Internet Marketing Dallas Texas - I have better SERP results with this Which one that I use will depend on what the top 10 competitors for the keyword are doing. I use the concept that they are using with a higher densite like dropping the name of the site (or adding it back in at the end if the keyword density is to high).
nice thread necro, how far back did you find this one? 4 years old lol and why exactly? it doesnt even have any PR?